The Carbon advocate. [volume] (Lehighton, Pa.) 1872-1924, 1887-05-14
Broadbrim'S New York Letter.

lowed 1t down through all these years; and
which, Notwithstanding the magnificent
improvement in our advancing civilization,
clings to 1t still, like leprosy. Here
generation after generation of criminals
live and die; from here penitentiaries and
States prisons are recruited; aud dozens OF
the most noted criminals who have ex-
plated their crimes upon the gallows in the
past century, all graduated in the Sixth
Ward. In it are embraced that plague
spot--the Five Points, and on Centre Street
the gloomy Tombs frowns down upon the
passer by. The Five Points are formed BY
the junction of Worth, Park and Baxter
Streets, and more villainous locality could
scarcely be imagined. Sin dies hard there.
Along Baxter street are ostensibly retailers
of second hand clothing, but many of them
really receivers of stolen goods. All the
tenements swarm with thieves and crimin-
ais of various degrees; and the policeman
who patrols this beat at night, grasps his
trusty night club with a firmer hold, and
looks well to his revolver, that it may be
ready for instant use. Here and there
some progress is manifest ia the cheapest
form of tenement houses, but many of the
old buildings antedate the Revolution, and
some OF them are old tumbledown ruins,
looking very much the same as they did
fifty years ago-the only marvel being that
they did not tumble down of their own rot
tenness. In this rank soil, crime blooms
and blossoms and thrives. As If the ma
tural accretion of our own evil population
was not enough, foreign criminals drift
here as naturally as water finds its level
The Chinese opium joints and gambling
dens here find shelter and protection; and
the Italian lazaroni, seek the companion
ship Of fellow criminals, who left their
country for their country's good. In the
midst of this moral lazaretto two buildings
claim especial attention-the Five Points
House OF Industry, and the Five Points
Mission. We have all read of the fable of
the struggle between darkness and light, of
virtue and sin, of life and death. That
struggle has been going on for years; thou
sands have been saved, but new thousand; ;
take their places-for here, notwithstand-
ing their foul surroundings, children multi
ply with fearful rapidly. Between the
Mission and the House of Industry is a
small paved space, having a music stand in
the middie-whch in the very mockery of
fitness is called Paradise Park. 1t has a
disreputable, uncanny and dirty look, and
is usually tenanted during the day and
night, when the weather permits, by frow-
sy i'll smelling vagrants, to whom the de-
lights of Blackwelrs Island must seem a
boon from their surrounding misery. No
plant, or shrub, or flower blooms in Para
disc Park; nothing but the hard stones,
dull and cheerless.
1t is amid surroundings such as these
that the House of Industry was reared, and
here are sheltered between three and four
hundred little childre9, rescued as brands
from the burning. 1t is fertuuste for So
ciety that there are men and women who
are willing to devote their lives to rescuing
these children from fate which otherwise
would be ineyitable. All of them are chill
dren OF the pooP;man of them are orphans.
waits and strays, the Aetsam and jetsam of
this great sea of crime and sin. When
they are first caught UP from the streets,
many of them are foul with vermin and
dirt For this especial provision has been
made in the shape of large porcelain bath,
where under the careful superintendent
Of the person having charge of this depart
ment, they learn their first lesson, that
cleanliness is next to godllness." Then
they are provided with clean clothes, after
which they are admitted to the society of
the other children. A touching sight Is
the Infants ward, where thirty or forty
little todIlers are cared for by gentle kind
faced woman, who acts as mother TO them
all. And no mother ever cared for the
children of her own flesh and blood with
greater tenderness than this woman, for
these motherless and fatherless waits.
When one remembers the wretchedness
and misery from which they have been
rescued, and sees how happy and how
cleanly they all are-you feel like invoking
blessing on those who haye sustained by
their free offerings this splendid charity.
Inthe quarter of century of its useful
ness, thousands upon thousands of chill
dren, who might have died in prison or on
the gallows, have been assisted TO lead
honorable lives, and many of them have
reached distinguished public stations. In
the House of Industry, young Italian
minister labors for the salvation of the de-
based and depraved of his fellow country
men, who here do much abound. He
stretches forth helping hand to those
whom the priest and the Levite usually
pass by. Ii it were not for the labors of
such as he, this moral municipal cancer
would destroy the city, and bring down on
New York greater curse than that which
of old swept away Sodom and Gomorrah.
Commerce and trade are proving them
selves powerful handmaidens to the Gospel.
Step by step they are cutting steadily into
the haunts of sin and crime, and in few
years the Five Points with its dark history
will be thing of the past.
This week an engagement was closed at
the l.yceum Theatre, in some respects the
most remarkable that has ever been played
In New York. The LYeeum Theater was
erected at the suggestion Of Steele Mackaye.
for the purpose Of giving the theater-goers
sf New Ysrk an opportunity sf seeing the